Saturday, January 18, 2014

Day 145 - Print-in-Place Fidget Cube

On Day 142 we printed a copy of emmett's Folding Cube model from Thingiverse. That model works wonderfully but assembly was a little difficult both because it was physically hard to snap together and because I am very bad at visualizing rotations and mirror images. For me it was challenging to put the correct pieces in the correct orientations in the correct places!

So today we made a print-in-place version using OpenSCAD, with the hopes of making a customizable version tomorrow. We put stickers on half of the faces; as you move the cube around by the hinges you can change from a stars-outside configuration to a stars-inside configuration.

Settings: MakerWare .2mm/standard. We did a LOT of testing to get the hinge clearances and the distances between cubes to work. In tomorrow's customizable version you'll be able to choose those tolerances according to your machine and filament.

Technical notes: Wait until tomorrow and we will post OpenSCAD code and some more detailed notes.

UPDATE: Here are the Customizer settings that will make something equivalent to this model: